The Science of Goalkeeping

OK, this research is pretty silly, and quite frankly, I can't imagine what compelled the researchers to undertake it, but because it has to do with something I love, soccer, I feel compelled to blog about it. There this short report in the March issue of Psychological Science that I just got around to reading on goalies' influence of the direction of penalty shots in professional soccer matches. Masters et al.1 start with the recognition that goalies stop only 18% of penalty kicks. Given that goals are at a premium in soccer, with games frequently won by one goal (often the only goal of the game by either side), that's an amazing statistic. It's incredibly difficult to score on a goalkeeper in the course of a game, but it's pretty easy to do so with a penalty kick.

This made Masters et al. curious about what goalkeepers can do to influence penalty shots. So they watched clips of 200 penalty kicks from "World Cups, African Nations Cups, European Championships, and Union of European Football Association (UEFA) Champions League matches" (I, personally, think they just liked watching penalty kicks, and figured since they'd spent so much time doing so they might as well write a paper about it). They found that in almost all instances (96%), the goalkeeper stood just slightly (and I mean just slightly) off center, creating a difference between the distance of the goalie from the two goal posts of about 9.95 centimeters, which amounts to a difference between the areas to the right and left of the goal keeper of about 2.9% of the total area of the goal. The side to which the goalie stood did not, however, influence the side to which the goalie dove as the ball was kicked. So goalies didn't seem to be aware of their position. However, when they looked at whether penalty takers were aware of the position of the goal keeper, they found that 103 out of 174 (I'm not sure what happened to the other 26 kicks) were to the side of the goal keeper with more space. So the position of the goal keeper does appear to affect the direction of the kick on a (statistically) significant percentage of penalty kicks. Penalty takers are, then, aware of the goalie's position.

To follow up their observational data, Masters et al. conducted three laboratory studies. In the first, they had participants view a scaled version of a goal on a computer screen, with a block (representing the goal keepre) placed either at different distances to the right or left of the center of the goal. Participants were asked to indicate to which side of the goal's center the block stood, and to report their confidence in their judgment. Their judgments were above chance (above 50:50) at differences in the total area on either side of the block of as small as 0.5%, despite the fact that at such small differences, the participants showed little confidence in their judgments. So it seems that people are able to notice such small diversions from center, but that they're unaware that they're noticing them.

In their second study, they used a much larger scale model of a goal (44% of the size of actual goals), and placed an image of an actual goalie (Oliver Kahn, the guy in the photo above) either to the right or left of center. This time, participants were given a ball on a "penalty spot" located about 5 meters from the screen (which, obviously, was no ordinary computer screen), and were told to kick the ball at the goal. Once again, at differences in the area to either side of the goalie of as small as 0.5%, participants shot at the side with the greater area significantly more often (i.e., above chance) than to the side with less area, though participants did not consciously recognize those differences in area until they were as large as 3.0%.

In a third study using the same stimuli as the second, they got similar results. This time, participants were asked to shoot only when Kahn was in the exact center of the goal. Consistent with the evidence from the first two studies that participants are unaware of the goalie being off center, participants tended to shoot even when the differences in area between the two sides of the goalie were as large as 3.0%, and as in the previous study, they tended to kick the ball to the side with the larger area, even when the differences were as small as 1.6%.

So what does this study teach us? Well, not a damn thing, really. Here's how Masters et al. ended their paper:

In summary, we have shown that it is feasible for a goalkeeper to influence perceptions of area and consequently the direction of penalty kicks by standing marginally to one side or another of the goal center; the goalkeeper can then strategically dive to the side with greater area. Extrapolation of our data indicates that the optimum displacement of the goalkeeper in real life is from 6 to 10 cm. The penalty taker is unlikely to be mindful of a displacement in this range, but is at least 10% more likely to direct the penalty kick to the side with greater area than to the side with smaller area.

Yeah, a lot of good that knowledge does us. If we were soccer coaches, and wanted to use this research, we'd quickly find that it wouldn't help us a bit. Kickers are obviously already utilizing their ability to detect to which side of center the goalie is standing, and goalies seem to be unable to notice their position relative to the center, so they can't use it to decide in which direction they should dive. But hey, some psychologists got to watch a bunch of penalty kick videos, and I got to write a post about it, so it's not a complete waste.

More like this

Penalty kicks are nearly universally reviled among soccer fans, yet they remain an important part of the game. The sport is so exhausting that extending it beyond 30 minutes of extra time in a playoff game could be dangerous for the players. Typically in playoff or championship matches, tie games…

I didn't get to see either of the weekend's games, other than about five minutes at the start of the second half of the championship, so I have very little to say. I haven't even seen highlights, as I had to spend the morning at the hospital for an intensely boring test, and they didn't have…

I've been thinking about Zuska's post on the negative impacts the Nobel Prizes might be having on the practice of good science. She quotes N. David Mermin, who opines:
[T]he system [of prizes] had become a destructive force...these things are systematically sought after by organized campaigns,…

Miscellaneous sports-related items (mostly soccer talk, because other than the World Cup, there are no sports going on now worth watching):
Before getting to soccer, some really important sports news: Williams College won its tenth Sears Cup in the last eleven years, as the best athletic program in…

on the other hand, if you (the goalie) know where the precise center of the goal is (and can mark it,) and deliberately sets up 3 or 4 inches to one side, you might have a good shot at setting up the shooter to go for the side that you know you're going to dive towards... the goalie might not generally notice where they are, but they might be able to plan for it.

the goalie coach I had in high school played for Lazio, and one of his pregame rituals was to mark out certain measurements around the goal. this could just one more mark.

Well, I don't know if this falls into your study, but the guy in the photo is by no means Oliver Kahn, but Fabien Bartez, the French national team goalkeeper... Look at the teeshirt, it has 6 letters on it, and Kahn is only 4 ;-) Besides, Kahn was never bold :-)

Otherwise, the study is great, and yes, they are perceiveing even centimeters when they are preparring their shots...

Reminds of the two researchers at (I think) Kent State about 15 yrs ago who managed to get a grant to study strippers. I forget why, may have had to do with influence of religious background. The headlines were great: "Scientists use grant money to attend strip clubs." Isn't great when you can combine a hobby with your professional interests?

Actually, I played soccer for 13 years. The goalie PURPOSEFULLY stands slightly askew. In this way, he puts pressure on the kicker to kick to the side with slightly more room. By doing this, the goalie gives himself a *slightly* better chance of diving in the correct direction. In fact, the goalie and kicker have a brief moment when they can decide which direction to kick/dive, its akin to a game of "chicken". Of course the reverse psychology can be true too, and the kicker can just kick to the shorter side, assuming that the goalie will be diving toward the larger side. Then again, the goalie may just be playing possum... sometimes its best to just kick it down the middle too.

Donate

Scienceblogs is part of Science 2.0, a pro-science outreach nonprofit operating under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Please make a tax-deductible donation if you value independent science communication, collaboration, participation, and support open access.

You can also shop using Amazon Smile and though you pay nothing more we get a tiny something.

More by this author

Back to real blogging soon, but before then, I wanted to post this. You probably saw a bit of this during NBC's Olympics coverage, but the whole thing has to be seen. It's one of the coolest things ever, though me being a huge Marvin Gaye fan might have something to do with me thinking that:

Way, way back in September of 2005, a Danish newspaper published some cartoons depicting Muslims and their prophet, and in response, thousands of Muslim extremists responded with varying degrees of threatened and actual violence. As you all know, this resulted in a storm of media coverage around…

I've been meaning to post about this set of studies for a while, but because it's relevant to Chapter 4 of Lakoff's The Political Mind, I figured I'd better get around to it before I write the review of that chapter.
It's been a while, but in the past, I've talked a lot about new theories of moral…

I have this friend from New York who, most of the time, speaks in a normal (that is to say, southern) accent that she's acquired as a result of being surrounded for so long by people who speak the King's English ('cause Elvis was a southerner). Occasionally, though, usually after she's been talking…

In Chapter 3, we finally get to read all about the Strict Father and Nurturant Parent. I knew this was coming, of course, but for some reason, when I finally got to this chapter, I still felt surprised. I mean, at some point, you'd think he'd give up metaphors that even his own epigones can't find…

More reads

If you're making your weekly check of the ebook editions (Kindle, Nook) of my quantum book (I'm not the only one who regularly looks at these, right?), you may have noticed a change: they're no longer sporting the original black cover you'll see in the right sidebar, but a new cover based on the smash hit UK edition. This isn't a database glitch, but a new release, with a new cover and adding the…

Before you ask yourself, "what kind of incendiary title is that," let me put this in perspective. In 2001, I started graduate school at the University of Florida, and in 2002, I took one of the most difficult year-long courses a physics student can take: Quantum Field Theory. This was both the best and worst course I've ever taken. I worked harder for it than I ever have for any other course, I…